220-1202 deep review — September 28, 2026

Same-context AI review; independent human review pending. Study guide.

Scope and lifecycle

The official Core 2 page retains V15, March 25, 2025 launch, same-version pairing, weights 28/28/23/21, maximum 90 questions, 90 minutes, 700/900 and English/German/Japanese. Retirement is estimated 2028; no exact date is announced. Both accepted objective/lifecycle monitor hashes are unchanged; no snapshots were replaced.

The public version 4.0 objectives PDF, discovered through CompTIA’s resource portal, has 20 pages and 36 numbered objectives in groups of 11/11/4/10. Read all numbered objectives and their detailed bullets. The operational mapping uses original paraphrases prefixed with published IDs. Page 12 layout confirms mobile OS/application issues are 3.2 and mobile security issues 3.3 despite a different plain-text extraction order. The 11 main-page summary rows are less granular; document version 4.0 does not mean a new exam version.

Teaching repairs

Added cloud productivity support and its separate identity, licensing, client and document-authorization checks (1.11), plus AI application integration, appropriate use, bias/hallucination/accuracy and private/public data-handling boundaries (4.10). Original worked cases require checking evidence and permissions before action. Expanded OS/file-system choices, Windows edition/command context, Linux numeric modes, macOS packages/folders, security-control roles, effective-access layers, browser/SOHO controls, symptom comparisons and synthetic-full/deletion-aware recovery chains. Strengthened 42 answered checks and eight proposed labs.

Microsoft’s Windows lifecycle table separates ordinary Windows 10 support ending October 14, 2025 from ESU and individual LTSC options; Enterprise LTSC 2021 differs from IoT Enterprise LTSC 2021. The current consumer-options page was read; no old consumer ESU deadline was adopted. Exam Windows terminology does not establish deployment support.

Device Encryption can be available on eligible Home devices. Full BitLocker edition support, active protection state, encrypted bytes, recovery and EFS certificates are distinct checks. Apple’s FileVault guidance likewise distinguishes automatic storage encryption on Apple silicon/T2 from password-bound protection. No keys, enrollment or encryption settings were inspected or changed.

The PDF’s 2.6 milestones explicitly mention System Restore in Windows Home. The guide teaches those alongside approved incident/evidence handling. System Restore concerns system state and does not replace personal-file backup. No protection was disabled and no incident-response action was executed.

NIST SP 800-88 revision 2, September 2025, supports clear/purge/destroy distinctions, SSD overwrite limitations, cryptographic-erase preconditions and verification versus validation. Recognizing drilling, degaussing or formatting in an exam outline does not prove those actions adequately sanitize every medium. Targeted sections were read; separately licensed IEEE/ISO standards were not accessed and no disposal was performed. Current password guidance is separated from the outline’s terminology about complexity/expiration.

Actual local execution

One original PowerShell example and an independent harness passed 18 checks on PowerShell 7.6.6 with Robocopy 10.0.26100.1. Newly created synthetic files were copied, modified and restored to a separate folder; SHA-256 comparisons and an empty-directory case verified results. First copy/restore returned 1 and unchanged repeat 0. Additional cases verified a retained destination extra (2), list-only differences without content mutation (3), missing-source failure (16), guarded cleanup and compatibility with a caller that treats native nonzero return codes as errors. Robocopy’s reference defines the nonzero success/difference convention and flags.

All owned temporary practice directories were removed after resolved-path checks. The script uses no mirror/purge, ACL override or policy change. No OS repair/install, System Restore, account/ACL/network change, encryption/key retrieval, malware, remote session, cloud service, Linux/macOS/mobile runtime, sanitization or full-system recovery was exercised. File hashes do not verify ACLs, application consistency, retention or offsite protection. The eight complete platform labs remain proposed; three integrated scenarios and additional worked cases are reasoning exercises.

Catalog and article intake

Public metadata checked: Pluralsight 5 courses/12 hours; LinkedIn 21h45, 22 quizzes and September 26, 2025 release; MeasureUp 287 questions and July 2025 update; Messer 74 videos/13h41. LinkedIn’s title and description both name 220-1202. Pluralsight’s public outline contains older Windows wording, so current full V15 coverage is not inferred. CompTIA Perform was added as an official option: exam-page estimates are Perform 30–60h, Learn 25–40h, Practice 10–20h and Labs 15–25h; overlapping products must not be added as a mandatory combined workload. Paid lesson interiors were not reviewed. O’Reilly/Udemy blocked automated rechecking. Places to learn is final.

The Microsoft Windows settings-backup resilience article was considered, but direct retrieval exposed only an 80-character title shell and web retrieval failed. No article body, video or rollout claim was adopted for Core 2. Its older MD-102 catalog note is historical evidence, not a new content read. This optional article did not block conclusions supported by the official product references.

Repository validation, 176 unit tests, strict site build, generated-site validation, catalog consistency and diff checks are recorded after execution in the operational receipt.